Huawei Pitches for More Clout in Europe

Senior executives of Huawei Technologies are busy promoting the Chinese company in Europe this week, meeting political and industry leaders while promising to bring more investment and jobs to the region.

The three European events in four days this week are part of Huawei’s efforts to solidify its position in Europe.

The Chinese telecommunication equipment supplier is already a major player in Europe, home to other established competitors like Ericsson, Nokia Solutions and Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. Huawei’s key European clients include carriers Vodafone Group, BT Group, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom, among others. Last year, Huawei’s revenue in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region was about the same as its revenue in China — each region accounting for about 35% of the company’s overall group revenue. And Europe has become even more important for Huawei in recent years, in part because the company’s networking equipment is effectively banned in the U.S., one of the world’s largest telecom markets.

At the Huawei Innovation Day in Milan Tuesday, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer William Xu told reporters that the Chinese company now has over 7,700 employees in Europe and plans to hire 5,500 more in the region over the next five years. Also attending the event were, Paolo Coppola, an Italian parliament member, and Guido Garrone, chief operating officer of Italian fiber network provider MetroWeb.

Also on Tuesday, Guo Ping, Huawei’s acting Chief Executive, was in London to announce plans to set up a new research and development center in Bristol. The guests at the reception in London included David Willetts, the U.K. Minister of State for Universities and Science, as well as Charles Dunstone, president of major U.K. mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse. At the reception, Huawei said that the number of its R&D jobs in the U.K. will increase to 300 by 2017, from 140 expected at the end of this year.

Guo then headed to Dublin and met with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny Thursday, pledging more R&D investment in the country in the coming years. The last of the three European events is the Huawei Ireland Broadband Forum in Dublin on Friday, where Guo is scheduled to give a speech.

A U.S. congressional report released in 2012 recommended that U.S. carriers avoid using Huawei’s gear, citing concerns that it could be used by Beijing to spy on Americans, even though Huawei has strongly denied such allegations. The broader national security debate has been further complicated by a recent media report that the U.S. National Security Agency plants intelligence-gathering “backdoors” in U.S. suppliers’ networking gear before they reach foreign customers – and also by the recent indictment of five Chinese military officers by the U.S. government for alleged hacking.

In early May, Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s elusive founder who rarely makes public appearances, sat down for a briefing with reporters in London.

“My reluctance to meet with the media has been used as a reason to label Huawei as a mysterious company,” Ren said through a translator during the briefing at the time. In a few years, “our idea is to make people perceive Huawei as a European company,” he said.